You know, I’m starting to wonder if the chart show needs to be moved to Radio 2.

1. HUNTR/X – “Golden” 

Not for this, obviously. “Golden” gets its fourth week at number 1, with a 50% margin over Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need” at number 2. The two Saja Boys tracks are at 4 and 6 – neither is climbing on the chart, but both are up in streams. There are also three Olivia Dean tracks in the top 10, with “Nice to Each Other” at 7 and her guest appearance on Sam Fender’s “Rein Me In” at 10. It’s… not the most diverse top 10 you’ve ever heard.

13. Doja Cat – “Jealous Type”

Well, that’s the sort of video that makes Tate McRae looks subtle, isn’t it? It’s the lead single from her fifth album and it’s a rather good 80s throwback dance track. It’s been a couple of years since we had her in the top 40 as a lead artist; the lead single from her last album was “Paint the Town Red”, which was a five-week number one. But it entered lower than this, so I wouldn’t bet against her climbing further.

19. Coldplay – “Yellow”
20. Coldplay – “Viva La Vida”

Yeah, this is the sort of thing I’m talking about.

The chart rules allow records that are less than three years old to escape the downweighting rule automatically if they have a big enough improvement week-on-week. Beyond three years, the rules leave it to the discretion of the chart compilers to decide whether to take a back catalogue track off downweighting in those circumstances – the only absolute rule being that they won’t do it for Christmas records. Following Oasis, we seem to have set a precedent that “going on tour” is a good enough reason to exercise discretion, and so here are two records from the Coldplay back catalogue – joining “Sparks”, which climbs 28-22 this week. This is vaguely controversial in chart circles, but it raises awkward questions about what exactly the chart is meant to be measuring – and, once you’ve decided that back catalogue records should generally be downweighted, what exactly is the justification for making exceptions for any of them.

“Yellow” reached number 4 on release in 2000, while “Viva La Vida” was a number 1 in 2008. If you’re wondering, “Don’t Look Back in Anger” is also still in the top 40 at number 32.

28. Chappell Roan – “Hot to Go”

This is also here because she’s touring the UK, although since the record is less than three years old, it automatically qualifies to come off downweighting (its streams were up by a quarter on last week). Her current single “The Subway” is at number 5, and “Pink Pony Club” is at 17.

31. Olivia Dean – “Dive”

This is a two year old Olivia Dean track, but she’s in a somewhat different position. As already noted, she has three tracks in the top 10, but one of them is as a guest on a Sam Fender single, so it doesn’t count towards her total. All of her singles are climbing this week, with “Man I Need” jumping 8-2 in its second week. She seems to have hit a tipping point where people are finally going back to check out her earlier work (not unlike what happened with Chappell Roan), hence this record finally reaching the top 40. It missed the top 100 entirely on release in April 2023, although it’s been floating around the lower reaches for the last few months.

Another Olivia Dean track, “The Hardest Part”, is only just behind it, but gets disqualified under the three-song rule. That track dates from 2020 and has never made the top 40. To be fair, if you ignored the three-song rule for her, you’d also have to ignore it for everyone else (including KPop Demon Hunters) and so it probably still wouldn’t have made the chart.

37. Stray Kids – “Ceremony”

K-pop. This is the second top 40 hit for Stray Kids; “Chk Chk Boom” reached number 30 last year. The album “Karma” enters at number 22, but it should be noted that Stray Kids understandably couldn’t care less about the album chart (or at least, aren’t going to mess about with their global release to accommodate local chart rules) and so released the thing in a bunch of chart-ineligible formats. If you counted those other formats, they’d be in the top 10. As it is, it’s their second release to make the album chart – the other was “5-Star”, which got a week at number 40 in 2023.

The top 40 currently contains one HUNTR/X track, two by Saja Boys, two by Twice, one by Blackpink and one by Stray Kids, so it’s a good showing for Korea.

40. Rihanna – “Breakin Dishes”

More back catalogue. This is an album track from 2007’s “Good Girl Gone Bad”, which has picked up streams after it was used in Love Island USA, of all things. It becomes her 51st top 40 hit.

This week’s climbers:

• “Man I Need” by Olivia Dean climbs 8-2.
• “Nice to Each Other” by Olivia Dean climbs 9-7.
• “12 to 12” by Sombr climbs 14-11.
• “Sparks” by Coldplay climbs 28-22.
• “Takedown” by Twice climbs 31-27.

The seven tracks leaving the top 40 are:

• “Victory Lap” by Fred Again, Skepta & PlaqueBoyMax, which entered at 4 and hung around for nine weeks. A follow-up, “Back 2 Back”, enters at 77  this week.
• “Messy” by Lola Young re-entered three weeks ago and got to 32 on this run.
• “Let Him Go” by Denon Reed & Cru2 had two weeks, peaking at 36.
• “APT” by Rosé & Bruno Mars also re-entered three weeks ago and got to 33 on this run.
• “Lady Lady” by Olivia Dean was a new entry at 38 last week, but would have been disqualified under the three-song rule even if it had otherwise managed to stay in the top 40.
• “Cigarettes & Alcohol” by Oasis re-entered at 34 two weeks ago.
• “Show Me Love” by WiztheMC & bees & honey re-entered at 39 two weeks ago.

On the album chart, it’s an unusually busy week.

1. Wolf Alice – “The Clearing”

Their fourth album, their second number one. (The others got to number 2.) The previous one lasted a respectable 6 weeks in the album chart, as well. The single above is really good.

It’s maybe worth noting just how much the album chart is now divided between the top-tier hit albums that hang around forever and the albums that place high for a single week by selling physical copies to a hardcore fanbase and nobodyh else. In the former category are the likes of Oasis, Alex Warren and Chappell Roan. In the latter… well, put it this way, last week’s number 1 was a Tom Grennan album, and this week it drops to number 95.

2. Deftones – “Private Music”

This is their tenth album, and their highest placing – the last two both reached number 5, and another of their albusm also reached the top ten back in 2003. They’re an act who tend to vanish after the first week, though.

3. Laufey – “A Matter of Time”

Her third album – the first didn’t chart at all, the second reached number 13 in 2023. She’s also now notched up three Christmas singles in the top 40.

7. Kingfishr – “Halcyon”

Chart debut. They’re an Irish folk band, and this is their first album. They’re big in Ireland, where this album reached number 1 and one of the tracks reached number 3 on the singles chart.

8. Pendulum – “Inertia” 

The Australian drum and bass act last released an album in 2010 (which reached number 1). They actually reformed several years ago, and “Inertia” is more in the vein of a collection of tracks released since then – it includes singles released back during Covid.

10. Sombr – “I Barely Know Her” 

Debut album, and obviously it includes the recent singles.

14. Royel Otis – “Hickey” 

Australian indie duo. This is their second album – the first one was a top 10 hit in Australia but didn’t chart anywhere else. This one, in contrast, is putting in a respectable performance around Europe.

22. Stray Kids – “Karma” 

We’ve covered this already.

31. Rudimental – “Rudim3ntal”

Includes the hit singles “Dancing is Healing” and “Green and Gold”. It’s their fifth album and the lowest placing by a mile – the chart positions run 1-1-5-16-31. This might be connected with the fact that it’s self-released.

32. Tyler, The Creator – “Cherry Bomb” 

Tenth anniversary reissue. It reached number 16 on release in 2015.

39. Oasis – “Complete Studio Album Collection” 

Imaginatively titled album box set.

40. The Who – “Live at the Oval 1971” 

This is the Who’s headlining set at a 1971 charity concert for famine relief in Bangladesh. It’s circulated as a bootleg for years, but the source material isn’t great and the official release has apparently cleaned it up considerably to get it to a releasable standard.